In addition, why do people always say to wait? Why not just get the TI now, use it until Pascal, wait for Pascal's price to drop (2-3 months after release), sell the TI, and THEN get one..? Getting one right at release is stupid.. it will for sure be overprice and access to it will be limited. Just get the TI now, it will not drop in value that much.. look at the 780 series.. maintained its value after the 9 series dropped pretty damn well. Even my 970s, I sold them a year later for $40 less than what I paid for them..
I agree. Get the Ti now. This everlasting wait for this and wait for that gets tired. If you have the money, get it. One never knows what happens tomorrow. And, when Pascal is launched, they will tell you to wait for the custom cards. When the custom cards come, they will tell you to rather wait for the new architecture. And so I will just go on and on...
Don`t have any problems with sli here either, been using it for 10 years now, there were games 10 years ago that did not support sli and it`s no different today, some engines have not supported sli in the past and its no different today. I would say 95% of my games have sli support including many indie games I got from steam. You just have to force AFR2 in the nvcp or use nvidia inspector. SLI has never been a completely set it and forget it and probably never will.
The Palit 980 Ti JetStream has a pretty nice cooler (subjective, I know) that should do the job just fine. An other reason was indeed the heat output. When they're packed together with a Xonar STX II and an Intel EXPI9402PT they get loud pretty quick. The Silencio 652s is a nice case but not that big And yeah waiting is pointless unless there's a release date or something like that. I'm not going to buy something if there are no benches. And besides, the high-end cards always held their value pretty well. Second hand Ti's still go for ~600-650 here, which means there's only a €50-75 decrease (!).
Easy to say that stuff can be put under water. Not everyone has the possibility, knowledge or will to do that :/ Maybe, I haven't thought about that Anyway, when I switched I had driver problems and couldn't do proper benchmarks between the two.
I was in the same spot as you back in September (well almost). I had a single MSI 970 and was then thinking of going SLI or getting a 980 Ti. Your situation is more tricky maybe since you have SLI already. I game at 1440p and ended up going with a 980 Ti for two reasons: - SLI seems to be headache right now and some titles don't even support it (most recently JC3). A single more powerful card seems the way to go and most people recommend this to skip the hassle with SLI support. - The 980 Ti has 6GB which plenty for me at 1440p and the resolution you game at is a big factor here. I plan to stick with this card till Nvidia drops the next "Ti" card with Pascal and slap a block on it. When it comes to the reference cooler, it will do its job but will not be as good as custom coolers and probably louder. My 980 Ti is from Galax and I have a Bitspower block on it so temps never really go above 45c.
I think people can expect as much difference between 980 Ti and the 1st wave of "high end" 16 nm card 1080GTX(?) as it was between 780ti and 980gtx... or 8800 gtx and 9800gtx.. But it could also be a great jump like between 285GTX and 480 GTX. I doubt the jump will be that large though. Nvidia are also not as pressed by AMD/ATI this time around as it was during 285GTX->400 series launch. So a mayor jump on the 1st wave of pascal, I doubt it. Guessing 16 nm will launch with desktop OEM gpus 1st, then medium range then medium high range and once the silicon is "stable" and their failure rate on 16 nm is under control they release the larger uncut dies. Nov 2016 for 1st high end pascal card is my guess
Here are some pics as promised, awesome card! 1500-8000 and not single peep was heard! This thing looks incredibly stylish and the performance is out of this world Glad I did it, thanks guys! Next thing on the list is removing that nasty power limit in the BIOS. PICS
Honestly, if this was 2 years ago I may agree with you, however these days there are alternatives to creating a full custom loop, so this argument [these days] doesn't really fly anymore. I had no experience with watercooling AT ALL. Grabbed myself a Predator 360 (now you can do it with a 240 as well), grabbed a TI waterblock, and had it installed and watercooled in under an hour. No needing to bleed out the loop, no need to cut tubing.. nothing. Its immensely easy these days.. even if you don't use a custom cooler like that, you can use any of the other solutions available for custom GPU cooling, or just buy one of the hybrid coolers if you're really paranoid about it. Personally, I don't see a need to buy gpus that run on air anymore.. I doubt I will ever again tbh. Running them on liquid is just so much better for noise vs performance..
If you're gonna drop 600-1000 on graphics, whats an extra couple hundred dollars for cooling that will last you the lifetime of several upgrades? Big picture stuff here. Also, the 240 is really not that expensive and you can now cool a gpu AND a cpu all together.. how is that not worth it in your opinion?
I didn't know the Predator 360 existed so it's definitely a good idea. But like Twiddles said, it's a huge cost. Predator 360 plus a 980Ti Waterblock costs 432€ which is quite a lot of money. I'll consider this for a future upgrade (Pascal maybe?). Just for comparison, how are your GPU load temps and at what frequency?
Well can't say I'm against water cooling, but will the 14/16nm GPUs actually benefit from watercooling? With less voltage leakage they'd need less voltage, run cooler... which is the most important thing in watercooling. So I personally don't think the newer GPUs will benefit from such an upgrade compared to current or older GPUs (same with CPUs imho). But maybe I'm totally off on this one
Nice! I agree with you that cooler looks cool! For 660 € that's basically a steal. Though still way more than I'd like to spend on a graphics card (forking out 400+ for my current GPU already felt uncomfortable) but that's me. Hey, sidelining the topic a question: I have R9 290 (current) and still two GTX 560 Ti 448 core's lying around. How much do you think I could get for all of them if I sold them? 980Ti keeps whispering to me "return to the green side" and I'm very open to suggestion, lols...
The gains do not outweigh the cost IMHO. And we don't know how the Pascal GPU's will do. If they follow in the footsteps of the 980 Ti's you'll need to go below 25c or even lower.
Thanks! Yeah it was way more than I'd ever spent in one go. Sold the 970's for €300 each, the EVGA SLI bridge went for €15 Those Ti's should go for about €65 if it's a decent model, don't know about other countries though. The 290 still goes for about €200-€230 depending on the model. Should about half the price of the 980 Ti Dooooo iiiiitttt.
